Note 29 — Chapter VIII
Reading edition
— Sir William Catesby and Sir Thomas Tresham were excellent types of the English gentry of their day. Each was “a fine old English gentleman, one of the olden time.” They had both become “reconciled” Roman Catholics — along with so many of the nobility, gentry, and yeomanry in the Midlands — in 1580-81, through the famous missionary journey of the Jesuit, Robert Parsons, probably forming with Edmund Campion two of the most powerful extempore preachers that ever gave utterance to the English tongue.
We may readily picture to ourselves “the coming of age” of the son and heir of each of these gallant knights and stately dames. And we may easily conceive of the bright hopes that either of the gentlewomen (especially the two sisters), in their close-fitting caps, laced ruffs, and gowns falling in pleated folds, must have cherished in their maternal hearts for an honourable career for the child — the treasured child — of their bosom. Alas! through the evil will of man, for the pathetic vanity of human wishes.